How Gmail’s Facelift Will Affect Your Email Marketing Efforts

Staying up-to-date with the latest news about content marketing and content creation takes time, effort, and commitment. Because your full-time job already likely drains you of all three of these, we’re here to help by keeping up on the content news that you need to have on your radar — including news about Gmail updates, marketing conferences, and streaming video consumption.

Three ways Gmail’s redesign will affect your email marketing

Because social channels are constantly making updates, it can be difficult to remember also to pay attention to the tweaks and updates that happen on other platforms. For example, Gmail has started to alert G Suite users that it will soon be making several updates to improve the functionality of Gmail.

Of course, any time Gmail makes updates, email marketers should consider what those updates mean for their marketing efforts. Though there certainly will be more news in upcoming days and weeks about the redesign, here are a few features of which marketers should stay apprised:

Snooze: The “Snooze” functionality is already part of Google’s Inbox by Gmail app, but it now is also on its way to the web. This feature allows a user to snooze an email, which removes the email from the inbox until a determined time when the recipient is ready to receive it. For marketers, this means that the data you receive about who opens your emails and when they open the emails may be a little more skewed than it used to be if users choose to snooze your emails and then interact with them at a later date or time.

Smart replies: “Smart Replies” also have already been a part of the Inbox by Gmail mobile app for some time. With the new update, these smart replies will now become part of the web experience as well. This introduction of artificial intelligence into Gmail could be advantageous for brands that use AI in marketing efforts. The more users start to use and understand AI on their own, the more comfortable they could become at utilizing AI-powered experiences from marketers in the future.

Sidebar: Gmail users will soon have a sidebar appear on the screen next to their emails. This sidebar can be customized to include Google’s calendar, a note-taking app, or tasks. For marketers, this means that your event-based content, such as sales, conferences, or other time and location-specific items, can easily be added to an individual’s Google calendar and will be immediately visible as well as upon return visits to Gmail.

Of course, it remains to be seen exactly when these new features will roll out. Likewise, some believe that Gmail users who don’t love the redesign may not necessarily need to use the new tools and functionalities. With past redesign efforts, Google has allowed users to revert back to prior versions.

“Nothing is set in stone or anything,” Listek said, “but if [utilizing tools from Inbox] is the route they are taking and this is what they are looking at, it might persuade me to head back [to Gmail] because it’s kind of the best of both worlds.”

The marketing technology conference, MarTech, is only days away. Those interested in attending the San Jose, Calif., conference may still save $200 by registering online before April 23. The conference runs from April 23-25.

A new study shows that people are using Google 3 percent more than they did last year, while usage of Facebook is 2 percent less. Google use has increased to 27 percent of all time spent by people on digital media. Conversely, Facebook use dropped from 18 percent to 16 percent.

Nearly a quarter of Amazon Prime subscribers say they would cancel the service if Prime Video were no longer a part of the package. The survey result provides more evidence of users’ desire to have access to on demand, streaming content.

Instagram is now testing “Nametags.” The new tool borrows from Snapchat’s snapcodes in allowing users to have a graphical representation for their username that they can customize and other users can scan.

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